Stories

Da Lat, Vietnam
April, 2017
My “one night in Da Lat” was a pleasant reprieve from the war and normal combat operations that we had been conducting. I’d heard of the city, but never believed all of the stories I’d heard. Stories about the beautifu…

Dak Lak Montagnard Museum, Buon Ma Thuot
April, 2017
When I attended Special Forces training at Fort Bragg, NC I learned that one of the primary tenants was something called Foreign Internal Defense (FID). What this was based on was learning how…

As we made our way from Saigon to Buon Ma Thuot (or as I knew it, Ban Me Thuot) the low lying farm lands turned into gently rolling foothills covered with coffee fields being tended by local farmers living along the edges, just as the rubber plantati…

The Central Highlands of Vietnam
Leaving the sights and sounds of modern day Saigon, we began our journey to the Central Highlands of Vietnam. As we left the city that I had come to feel comfortable in and approached the outlying rural areas, I fe…

The one thing that seems to be a constant in Saigon is the delicious smell of food cooking - from the street vendors, open air cafes, coffee shops and bakeries - it was that way in the late 60's and remains so today. The first time I came to the ci…

House 10
Aka “The Safe House in Saigon”
On our first trip to Saigon we unsuccessfully searched for a villa, called House 10, that had been used during the war. It was initially a Central Intelligence Agency property that was used to support clan…

Sapa Valley
Northern Vietnam, along the Chinese border
April 6, 2018
“Hey Paul, why’d you quit?” I asked.
“What the hell are you talking about,” he said.
“You went part of the way out, then you turned around and came back, that’s qu…

The inspiration for MACV-1 was the most beloved boot in Special Forces history, the Vietnam-era Jungle Boot. That boot solved a lot of problems for the guys back then; namely, it breathed more, it drained faster, and the “Panama sole” was better at…

Maison Centrale, Hanoi, Vietnam
Aka “The Hanoi Hilton”
Sunday, April 8, 2018
I could feel Rich going back in time - planning how his MACV-SOG team could rescue the POW’s trapped behind these walls some 45 years ago.
The approach was beautifu…

For a lot of years I’ve listened to my friends and the people I served with talk about their trips back to Vietnam. It was interesting to hear, but I was never prepared to spend the time or effort to do so myself. Most importantly, I wasn’t sure if I…

Paul Litchfield
30 Year Shoe Dog, and inventor of the Reebok Pump
Senior Director, GORUCK Footwear
One Friday in 2014, my flight from halfway around the world landed in Boston, I went through customs, got in my car and drove straight to the star…

A simple black boot, comfortable in any and every environment imaginable. It’s so simple it took us four years to get right.
One boot.
This is the tale of the details to the details, the why’s — all of which began from the well earned tribal kn…